by Debra Webb
“This is Elise Van Valkenburg at the Second Life store.”
For a moment she hadn’t a clue what the woman was talking about and then it hit her. “Did my credit card get declined?” Jesus. Talk about humiliating. These were people Sylvia Baron and Gina Coleman knew, for heaven’s sake. Irritation kicked aside the mortification. It sure took them long enough to let her know. She’d bought her sofa and a few other small items at the Second Life thrift store more than a week ago.
“No… I was calling about something you left in our store room.”
Storeroom? She hadn’t gone into their storeroom. “I’m sorry, but I’m pretty sure I didn’t leave anything.”
“It has your name on it.”
Jess wanted to reach through the phone and shake the woman. “Well, what is it?”
An impatient sigh sounded in her ear. “It’s a blanket all bundled up and… oh… my… God.”
“Mrs. Van Valkenburg?” What the devil was going on with this woman?
“Mrs. Harris, this blanket of yours is full of bones.”
Birmingham Police Department, 12:30 p.m.
Dan thanked the search team commander and ended the call. He collapsed in his chair and rubbed his eyes with the pads of his fingers. With the manpower being utilized on this case it was incomprehensible to admit they had nothing.
“I take it he didn’t have good news?” Harold Black surmised.
“No hits on the Amber Alert and no sign of her in the wooded ravine that borders her neighborhood.” Jesus Christ, they had to find this kid. “Sorry for the interruption.” Dan cleared his throat, worked at keeping his cool. “You’re here to give me an update.” He doubted any of it was good news but a man could hope.
Harold slid his eyeglasses into place and studied his notes “I have a conference call with Special Agent Gant at three. I’m hoping we have some news on the Spears investigation.”
Every muscle in Dan’s body tightened as he thought of Spears. “Maybe we’ll get really lucky and Spears’s rotting corpse has turned up.”
“We can always hope,” Harold agreed. “I wanted to update you on the Allen case.”
Ted Allen. Captain Allen, head of the Gang Task Force, had been missing almost two weeks now. Until yesterday there was nothing. No credit card activity. No calls to his family. The last time his cell phone had pinged a tower was near Jess’s apartment. That he and Jess had been locked in battle over the Lopez case didn’t lend itself to the idea that he’d driven by hoping for a friendly visit.
Whatever the hell Allen had been doing, it hadn’t been in the line of duty.
Until he showed up or they found his body the only hope for figuring out his mysterious disappearance was if someone came forward with information. Except that his cell phone suddenly turned up yesterday—mixed in with Dan’s trash.
“The cell phone held traces of material picked up on the street that had come from your city trash receptacle.”
“You said the blood on the phone was confirmed as Allen’s.”
Harold nodded. “It was.”
Dan felt his temper rising at the idea of where this was going. As the chief of police he understood it was the right and only thing to do. But that didn’t make it feel right. He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Now the investigation turns to how his cell phone got into my trash, right?”
Harold nodded again. “You understand this in no way means we believe such a ludicrous scenario. Yet we have to follow proper protocol.”
“Of course.” Dan forced a smile. “Do what you have to do, Harold. I have nothing to hide.”
Harold made a face. “Certainly not.”
A rap on his door was a welcome reprieve. Tara, his receptionist, poked her head in. “Chief, there’s a delivery for you on my desk.”
On her desk? Tension rippled through him. “What kind of package?”
He was on his feet and halfway across the room before she could get out an answer: “A padded envelope from… Eric Spears. At least that’s the name on the return address.”
Spears? A fist of fear slammed into Dan’s gut. He and Harold exchanged a look.
As they rushed down the hall, Dan deliberated about two seconds on calling in the bomb squad, but since the package had passed through the X-ray machine in the lobby he wasn’t going to waste the time.
Spears wanted to taunt him, not kill him… at least not yet.
At Tara’s desk, Dan started to open the package, but Harold stopped him and handed him a pair of gloves. The seconds it took to drag on the gloves had his frustration level skyrocketing. He opened the flap and looked inside. Photos. A stack of glossy four-by-sixes.
His heart stumbled as he shuffled through the stack. They were all of Jess. Leaving her place over on Conroy. Entering the BPD lobby downstairs. Some included Dan. The two of them together this past weekend. Jess leaving the coroner’s office… at the creek where the flowers had been left from a supposed secret admirer.
At a restaurant he didn’t recognize with Detective Wells and Corlew. That one gave him pause. What the hell was Corlew doing there?
“He’s getting closer, Dan.” Harold pointed to the FedEx label. “This was sent from the Twentieth Street location.”
Fury twisted in Dan’s gut. “We need someone over there now. See if the clerks can ID the sender. Maybe there’s video surveillance.”
“I’ll check out the FedEx store myself,” Black assured him. To Tara he said, “Call forensics and have them send over a tech to get this to the lab for analysis.”
Tara reached for the phone on her desk.
“You should call Agent Gant,” Black suggested. “I’m heading to FedEx.”
Dan already had his cell phone in hand. “Call me as soon as you know anything.” The tightness in his chest made it harder and harder to breathe. He put through the call as he walked back to his office but got Gant’s voice mail. Dan left a message.
After he’d closed the door of his office, he leaned against it. One of the photos was of Jess climbing the stairs to her apartment. How is he getting this close with twenty-four-hour surveillance on her apartment?
He pushed off the door and stalked to his desk. Probably a rooftop across the street. With the right high-powered lens he might not even need to be that close. Dan shook his head. Their suspicions that Spears had more than one of his so-called followers right here in Birmingham watching her had just been confirmed, as far as he was concerned.
His cell vibrated. Dan tensed, hoped it was Gant.
Jess.
A surge of fear thudded in his chest. “Everything okay?” If his greeting didn’t tip her off that everything was not okay on his end, he wasn’t sure what would. He had to get a handle on his emotions.
But damn it, he was only human.
“There’s been another delivery.”
Her voice was thin. Why the hell was this bastard taunting her? “Where?” That he managed the one word without his voice trembling was a flat out miracle.
“At the Second Life thrift store. Harper and I just pulled up.”
“I’m on my way.”
“Don’t bother coming here,” Jess argued. “We won’t be at the scene long. I’ll let you know when we’re en route to the coroner’s office. I’ve called Sylvia, and she and one of her assistants are en route.”
“All right.” He forced air into his lungs. “I’ll see you there.”
He dropped his cell back on his desk as Tara announced via the intercom that Agent Gant was returning his call.
“Thanks, Tara.”
Dan stabbed the blinking light. Before he shared this latest development, he wanted whatever updates the FBI had. “Gant, tell me you’re about to make me happy.”
“What I have is bad news.”
Defeat tugging at him, Dan lowered into his chair. “Let’s hear it.”
“The chatter on the Net about Jess stopped abruptly. That’s a bad thing considering we were so damned close to tracking down the source. Now th
at won’t happen unless a new thread surfaces.”
Dan bit back a string of curses. “Still nothing on where he is?”
“Zilch. We’ve taken control of his company, SpearNet. We’ve got forensic experts in there digging through electronic files and every piece of hardware in the place.”
That could take a lifetime or two. Defeat tugged at Dan. He could not let this guy get to Jess. There had to be a way to stop him or to distract him.
“Worse than any of that,” Gant went on, “we just got IDs on two of the three women in the photos. One is from Mobile, the other from Somerville. Both moved to Alabama just this summer to start college this fall. That’s why they weren’t in your DMV database.”
“Why am I just hearing about this?” And why wasn’t this good news?
“We didn’t want to put out the word until we had the women in protective custody. That’s where the worse news comes in. Both are missing. It seems each one was recently notified of winning a weekend getaway. No one has seen either woman since last Friday, and no one we talked to had the slightest idea where they were going. We’re hoping someone will help us identify the third woman before she goes missing as well.”
“So we can assume that Spears has at least two of them already.” More of that red-hot fury roared through Dan. He needed to stop that son of a bitch.
“I think that’s the only rational assumption. Either he has them or one of his followers does. We’ve got agents tearing their apartments apart piece by piece in hopes of finding some trace of evidence we can use. We’re dissecting their e-mails, Facebook, Twitter. We’re trying to cover every avenue. We’ve added their vehicles to the BOLOs on the two women we’ve identified. If nothing else, maybe we can determine where their vehicles were last seen.”
Dan explained the delivery he’d just received. “I don’t see how one man manages to maintain this kind of proximity to her. There has to be more than one here, we just haven’t gotten a visual on him yet.” As terrifying as the perp in the Infiniti was, as least they had pinpointed him.
“I wouldn’t admit this to just anyone, Burnett, but frankly we just don’t know what we’re dealing with here. If Spears has created some elaborate network, this dark-haired man may be only the tip of the iceberg.”
“That’s what keeps me awake at night, Gant.”
The call hadn’t given Dan any new hope that this situation with Spears was headed in the right direction. Not at all. What he’d gotten was more reason to be concerned about Jess’s safety.
A whole hell of a lot more worried.
He checked the time. The mayor and the citizens of Birmingham were expecting him to pass along comforting words in today’s press conference but he didn’t see how that was possible. They had nothing in the way of evidence and now another child was missing.
He’d scrubbed both hands over his face. Damn it all to hell. He had wanted to keep Jess out of the news as much as possible, but with that little girl’s disappearance he had an obligation to broaden the scope of the press conference. The community needed to see that Jess was involved. She had earned a place in the hearts of the citizens.
But his heart was ice-cold with fear.
He closed his eyes and fought to keep the emotions at bay.
Tara interrupted his plunge into despair to let him know the forensic tech arrived and bagged the FedEx envelope. He thanked her and checked the time. Jess should be calling him soon and he’d head to the coroner’s office.
His cell vibrated. Harold Black calling.
Another spike of tension speared him. “What’d you find out?”
“If you’re not sitting down,” Harold said, “I’d suggest you take a seat, Dan.”
The frustration that had started simmering when Dan received that package reached a boil. “You have an ID on the sender?”
“The clerk here at the FedEx store positively identified the man who shipped that package to you. She was so certain that I made the manager pull the security video so I could see for myself.”
Couldn’t be the dark-haired man. They didn’t even have an artist’s rendering on the guy. Jess hadn’t gotten enough facial details with him wearing those damned sunglasses.
“The man who sent you that package was Eric Spears, Dan. I… saw him on the video. He was right here in this store, only a few blocks from where you are right now.”
Son of a bitch.
Jefferson County Coroner’s Office, 1:50 p.m.
Sierra Campbell. Eight years old. Silky black hair and sparkly blue eyes. Abducted fifteen years ago. From the looks of her small, delicate bones, she had died not long after that.
How did they stop this evil? Jess and her team were doing everything possible. Dan shifted his gaze to her at the other end of the exam table, where she waited next to Sylvia.
One day, if he was lucky, he and Jess would be married and have children. How could they protect their children from monsters like this? Maybe Jess was the smart one. He got the impression she wasn’t exactly looking forward to motherhood. Maybe she was right. Maybe people who had witnessed the horrors they had shouldn’t have children.
“I don’t know how you do it, Harris.” Sylvia lifted her hands and bowed her head in mock worship. “Somehow you manage to keep everyone who’s anyone talking about you. You make the news more often than our esteemed mayor.”
“That’s me,” Jess tossed right back at her. “Every serial killer’s pin-up girl.”
“As soon as Elise Van Valkenburg from the Second Life store informed you,” Sylvia said, “she called Carrie Bradley and half the other brookies she schmoozes with on a regular basis. You’re going to have your own fan club.” She made a harrumphing sound she would never dream of making in front of the Mountain Brook friends she’d just mentioned. “Frankly, I’m a tad jealous.”
Dan wanted to tell her to cut the crap, this wasn’t the time. She needed to get on with it, but he kept his mouth shut. The state of mind he was in, the less he said the better.
Jess pointed to the blanket that was child sized, about three feet by three feet. “You were saying something about glitter and tinsel.”
“First,” Sylvia reminded her, “let’s not forget about the note.” She glanced at Dan. “This guy has it bad for Harris.”
More of the frustration and worry already chipping away at his self-control rushed in, swinging a sledgehammer this time. He hadn’t heard there was another note. He’d just as soon not have heard Sylvia’s commentary on it.
Why the hell wasn’t forensics doing this? Stop. Calm down. He knew the answer to that one. Sylvia promised to drop everything for this case and get something to Jess immediately. Then the evidence could be turned over to forensics for a final analysis.
“Tell me about the note,” he prompted in a reasonably calm voice.
Sylvia started to speak but Jess cut her off. “Same as before, he circled words in the newspaper articles. He said, ‘I couldn’t help myself. Find me, Jess. I need you.’ ”
Jesus Christ. “If we don’t find this guy…” Dan didn’t want to say the rest out loud.
“We will,” Jess insisted with far more confidence than he could dredge up at the moment. “Then the brookies will really have something to talk about.”
In spite of present circumstances her comment sent a blast of relief through him. Jess wasn’t having any trouble holding her own with anyone. Not even his mother, the quintessential brookie. How his mother’s issues with Jess could cross his mind right now was beyond bizarre. He was losing it. Pure and simple.
“There’s a lot more I need to do,” Sylvia noted, “but I did find significant trace elements, including dog hair, mostly attached to the blanket.”
“Dog hair?” Jess said. “Any ideas on the breed?”
“Too long for a Lab. Don’t hold me to it yet, but something like a golden retriever or a cocker spaniel. Not the reddish color, more golden or beige. He got sloppy this time. There are some blood smears on the blanket.”
Jess’s face paled. “New or old?”
Sylvia winced. “New.”
Dan bit back a scathing curse. If this bastard had already hurt Janey Higginbotham…
“We’re running out of time,” Jess said, her face pale. “A little girl goes missing and we’re almost a month away from the harvest moon. This forking over of the remains he’s obviously kept as souvenirs is telling enough, but this latest move is sloppy and way out of character. He wants us to find him, but something is prompting this new erratic behavior.”
“He wants you to find him,” Dan argued.
Jess looked at him, and he wanted to tell her right then and there this bastard wasn’t the only trouble she had just now. Spears was here. God Almighty, how was he ever going to protect her?
“This—” Sylvia tapped one of the slides she’d placed in a tray on the exam table, forcing their attention back to her “—is glitter. It’s not new. Red and green.” She moved to the next slide. “The fragments of silver tinsel-type fiber makes me think the blanket was stuck in a box of Christmas decorations.”
“What about the remains?” Dan’s gut clenched. They were talking about a little girl. A little girl, Sierra Campbell, who had lost her life to this madman.
“Clean like the others,” Sylvia explained. “Nothing I’ve seen so far that indicates manner of death. As I told you before,” she said to Jess, “there’s other testing we can do, but the bones aren’t telling us much from the outside. Since this set was just delivered, there’s a lot I don’t know except that the condition, from a visible and structural standpoint, is solid. No fractures, or anything like that.”
“Why is he going in reverse chronological order?” Jess braced her gloved hands on the exam table. “What the hell is he trying to tell me that I’m missing?”
“I can’t answer that one, but before you run off to inform the parents,” Sylvia said, “I’ll need to compare dental records. I haven’t had time to do that yet.”
As if her assistant had been standing by for his cue, he rushed in and carefully placed the skull next to the rest of the bones. “The images are on your iPad, Dr. Baron.”